Nandani Bharrat: A New York spiritual healer who tries to dispel stereotypes

Bushwick, New York City: In a Bushwick apartment building, Nandani Bharrat, 29, sits on a mattress with her eyes closed and her legs crossed in a lotus position. The air is spiced with incense and the room is quiet except for the rhythmic hum of chants.

Bharrat, also known as Kali Ma after the Hindu goddess of creation, preservation, and destruction, is one of the city’s many psychic healers New Yorkers rely on for astral insight.

She founded her practice, Kali Ma: Triple Goddess Tarot and Healing, in 2013 and specializes in card readings and guided meditation. She is also trained in a Japanese healing technique, known as “usui shiki ryoho,” that believes energy can be channeled into a patient through touch to restore physical and emotional well-being.

Bharrat feels she offers a valuable service, but many remain skeptical of her profession. In recent years psychics have been arrested and charged with fraud, grand larceny and other crimes. A stereotype of how fortune tellers swindle small fortunes out of their customers remains. Still, however, there are those, like Bharrat, who genuinely believe in their craft.

“It started with things like meditation and energy healing, but as I get deeper into the practice, it’s about acceptance,” she said. “It’s about accepting the darkness, accepting your negative feelings and embracing who you truly are. Those things are meant to be acknowledged and dealt with.”

Raised in a multi-religious household of Hinduism, Islam and Catholicism, Bharrat’s upbringing was steeped in spirituality. She was born in the South Bronx and grew up in Bushwick after her family emigrated from Guyana to New York (Indo-Caribbean descent). On her father’s side, Bharrat comes from a lineage of Brahmin—a member of the highest Hindu caste, that of the priesthood.

“I never thought I’d be doing something like this at all,” she said with a chuckle. “But I feel like I need to be of assistance to others. Whether it’s poverty or mental health issues, there are these quick fixes happening, but we’re not actually healing ourselves.”

Even in a country where fortune telling raises some eyebrows, unlikely people with high profiles have trusted in the supernatural. The late Nancy Reagan, for example, made no secret of her affinity for astrology and Hillary Clinton was once famously led by a medium through conversations with long-deceased leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi and Eleanor Roosevelt.

For the everyday person, however, Bharrat hopes her clients will be able to glean a deeper understanding of their lives from her services.

“Hopefully what I’m doing is showing that even if you don’t get the support that you think you need, it really is there,” she said. “It’s just in a metaphysical way that we don’t always see with our eyes.

Jai Sears from Grenada, Caribbean has written a letter to editor in response to complaints against the statue of Gandhi in Grenada. Here is the text:

I write in response to a letter on Mahatma Gandhi entitled “Dustbin of history” written by Josiah Rougier and published in the Grenada newspaper, The New Today (Nov 3, 2017). In his letter, Rougier is asking the Government to remove the bust-statue of Gandhi which overlooks Sauteurs Bay in Grenada where East Indians arrived 160 years ago. Rougier’s opinion is based on the false notion that Gandhi was racist because the Mahatma reportedly considered Indians to be superior to black Africans when he referred to the latter as “kaffirs.”

Gandhi was only 27 years old when he made that contextual statement. If Rougier had done his research, he would have found that Nelson Mandela said: “Gandhi must be forgiven for these prejudices in the context of the time and the circumstances.” The quote can be found in “Gandhi the Prisoner” by Nelson Mandela published in 1995. Gandhi was a man; he was not god. And even god made mistakes.

Photo of Jai Sears

Rougier must instead focus on the Gandhi’s vision of non-violent protest and his belief in satyagraha which inspired rebels and revolutionaries around the world. Gandhi’s ideas influenced leaders of the African National Congress and the struggle by Indians and blacks against white apartheid rule in South Africa. From as early as 1956 when he was 27 years old, Martin Luther King, Jr. referred to Gandhi as “the guiding light of our technique of nonviolent social change.”

Following the success of his boycott, King contemplated traveling to India to deepen his understanding of Gandhian principles. The fact is that Gandhi saw people of all races, castes, colours and creeds as equal which led to his assassination by a Hindu fanatic in 1948. So who is this unknown Josiah Rougier? Is he as illustrious as the great Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King? And is he disagreeing with his possible heroes?